README.org

Purpose

Motivation

I use version-ed backups in Emacs. Theoretically, I go to the backup directory
occasionally and clean out old backups with dired. In reality, backups are
never cleaned out. A GB of storage costs fractions of a penny, and my text
files are tiny.

Why not use VCS (version control system)

I do. And you should. Whenever possible.

But not all your edits and saves will be ready to be checked into VCS, but it
can be inconvenient if you lose them. That’s where version-ed backups come in.

If I only worked on one machine, then my backups are a crude super-set of the
VCS content.

The problem with version-ed backups

File-names are long

I don’t try to solve this. :(

There is no easy way to traverse them

I didn’t find Chad Braun-Duin’s backups-mode until after I made backup-walker.
Although they seem to serve different purposes.

“backup-walker” does not modify the Emacs backup system. It’s just a way to
quickly traverse the backups you already have. And the emphasis is on
traversing backups. There is never a listing of all the backups. (although if
you’re interested, you can jump to the backup directory with dired-jump
while traversing)

Features

traverse incremental diffs between backup versions

[X] open backup in traversal mode if the diff seems interesting

traverse backups

[X] Once a backup is opened, traversing amongst backups is easy using the same keys.

[X] the point kept the same as much as possible while traversing backups as
much as possible by parsing diff output on the fly.